Josh GriffinMore PostsFree eBook from LeaderTreks for Mission Trip Parents
All programs and trips have short comings in youth ministry and one of them for student mission trips is that parents are not involved. Mission trips are better when parents work hand and hand with youth workers. In Helping Parents Connect, Doug Franklin outlines how parents can be involved in their students’ mission trips before, during, and after the trip. This tool is designed to get you involved from the beginning and to help parents grow with your kids through this experience.
JG
Josh GriffinMore PostsEveryone’s Called to Youth Ministry
Just finished reading a pre-release copy of Darren Sutton’s new book, Everyone is Called to Youth Ministry (releases tomorrow). It is a great book with a simple premise that in reality is a great resource to challenge you to think creatively how to attract, recruit, train and encourage volunteers in your youth ministry. Excited for you to check out this new resource from LeadersTreks!
If you’re a full time youth worker, you have a lot on your plate. Parent meetings, planning a calendar, budgets, teaching, big events, small groups, keeping your senior pastor in the loop, and oh yeah, building relationships with students. Even if you had multiple people teaming up to take on all the responsibilities of the youth ministry, you still would not be able to get everything done. You need a team, but often building that team seems impossible.
In this bold new look at recruiting and training quality adult staff and volunteers, Darren Sutton challenges our thinking on who is called to serve in the youth ministry. Hint: it’s everyone. Darren’s humor will draw you in, and his wisdom and experience in youth ministry will challenge your perspectives on who to recruit and how to train them. This book will help you look everywhere for adults who can passionately serve in youth ministry. After all, everyone’s called to youth ministry…they just don’t know it yet.
JG
Josh GriffinMore PostsGUEST POST: Student Leadership Lesson – God Doesn’t Need Us!In my last post, I talked about the awesome student leadership book we have coming our way. While we were in-between books, we have been putting together our own lessons that are based off of various pieces of scripture. Last Sunday, we did our lesson on Acts 17:24-25 and our students responded really well to it, so I thought I would share what we did!
24 “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. 26 From one man, he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. Acts 17:24-2
We started off the lesson by giving the students 20 minutes in prayer and meditation on the scripture. Normally, we would introduce the topic to them and what we want them to take out of the verses we give them, but we wanted to see what they would come up with on their own.
Here is what we wanted to drive home:
GOD DOESN’T NEED US! In fact, God doesn’t need anything! Sometimes, we have this idea in our head (whether consciously or unconsciously) that if we don’t do something it won’t get done. We think that God’s plan is dependant on us making the right choices. We think that if we don’t evangelize to that person or serve at that homeless shelter, then no one will do it. That leads us to have a hero mentality that abandons humility and puts God in a box. But God can work outside of you. He was working way before you were born, and he will continue to work after you die. The great news is that God invites us to be used by Him to do His will! Incredible!
Here is a cool response we got from a student named Sierra (paraphrased):
Because God’s work isn’t confined to us, there is no room to boast about what you have done in the name of the Lord. We can never take pride in the fact that we lead someone to Christ or started a ministry because it was not us that did it! It is by God ALONE that we are able to accomplish anything. Same goes for our gifts! We should be thankful for each talent and gift that we have because they are each God given, we have done nothing to deserve them!
What have you been teaching your student leaders?
Colton Harker is the Student Leadership Coordinator at Saddleback HSM. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact him at coltonharker@gmail.com or on twitter at @ColtonHarker.
Josh GriffinMore PostsGUEST POST: Student Leaders Start Here
One of the main components of our Student Leadership program is leadership development. Since our student leaders are responsible for a lot in our ministry, it is so important that we are building them up as leaders that are capable of succeeding in their roles. Recently, we have been using podcasts to help develop leadership skills in our students, but we figured that it was time to go through another book with them. I wanted this next season of our teaching to help our students discover how God has uniquely gifted them for leadership. After doing some research, I found the perfect book to help our students: Student Leaders Start Here by Doug Franklin.
Student Leaders Start Here is a workbook that is broken down into three sections: Leadership Design, Balancing Act, and Mission First-People Always. The thing I love about this book is that, in each section, students are not only taught an important leadership principle, but they also take quizzes and assessments that help them discover more about the leader God created THEM to be. Each section also ends with a preplanned small group time that helps students process their thoughts together (a huge help for us as we lead the students through the book).
I once heard that a high-schooler’s biggest desires are to find their identity and be understood. That is why I think that this book will be a hit in any youth ministry because it helps the students learn more about themselves, and provides them with a way to communicate these discoveries with other people. I really believe in this 94-page book. It may be a short read, but I believe that it will have long-term results in our students, and ultimately our ministry.
To order it, or find more information about it, head on over to their website!
How about you, what are doing to develop your student leaders?
Colton Harker is the Student Leadership Coordinator at Saddleback HSM. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact him at coltonharker@gmail.com or on twitter at @ColtonHarker.
Josh GriffinMore PostsSquare One: Free Volunteer Training from LeaderTreks
The gang over at LeaderTreks just released a new free volunteer training lesson today to help your volunteers understand the purpose of your youth ministry.
Square One gives you the opportunity to talk to your adult volunteer about youth ministry basics that we often forget. Purpose, structure, strong teaching and building intentional relationships can make your youth ministry great. LeaderTreks has developed these short 30-45 minute training downloads to help you in this process.
This free lesson, The Purpose of Youth Ministry, will help your adults have a correct view of youth ministry. Many adult volunteers think youth ministry is the ministry of the church to students when in reality youth ministry is the ministry of students to their world.
JG
Josh GriffinMore PostsWhen Student Leadership is Run Well
Loved this post from Doug Franklin over at LeaderTreks -made me thankful for the progress we’re making right now with our newly relaunched Student Leadership program as well. It is a great article – head there for the whole thing – here’s a great clip from near the end…
When a student leadership team is run well it will:
1. Not be for every student in your youth group
2. Require students to meet a standard of behavior for application
3. Meet on a regular basis
4. Study leadership principles
5. Have students in real and important leadership roles
6. Allow students to make decisions without direction from adults
7. Students will face consequences for their decisions
8. Students will see themselves as the owners of their youth group
9. Will have adult facilitators who are passionate about student leaders
10. Will challenge students to do the impossible
JG
Josh GriffinMore PostsGreat Summer Reading Suggestions for Students to Grow on Their Own
Today we’re simply pointing you to great tools that will help students grow on their own. Check them out in consideration of something that would work in your ministry context as well:
1-Minute Bible by Doug Fields
You’ve committed yourself to more Bible reading plans than you care to admit, and you’re 187 chapters behind in your latest attempt. If this sounds familiar, then the One Minute Bible for Students is what you need to get back and stay on track. Do the math. There are 1400 minutes in a day. It will take you One Minute to read a passage of Scripture. “Hey, that’s doable!” Additionally, veteran youth pastor Doug Fields has contributed some great insights to help you apply these short, one-minute Scripture readings to your every day life.
Student Leaders Start Here by LeaderTreks
Student Leaders Start Here is a practical, interactive workbook, to help students grow in leadership. It focuses on three topics that are crucial for developing as a leader, and gives students a personal leadership profile for their strengths and growth areas in each topic. Give this book to the individual student who is growing in leadership, or use it in your student leadership team and small groups when you follow the bonus pages for small group facilitators.
Stripped Clean by Jeff Storm
Give your teenagers a guilt-free, up-close look at materialism—one that strips away the overwhelming messages of a consumer society. You’ll see authentic changes in readers as they tear out pages to use in Jesus-centered activities.
Case for Christ Student Edition by Lee Strobel
Who Was Jesus? A good man? A lunatic? God? There’s little question that he actually lived. But miracles? Rising from the dead? Some of the stories you hear about him sound like just that—stories. A reasonable person would never believe them, let alone the claim that he’s the only way to God! But a reasonable person would also make sure that he or she understood the facts before jumping to conclusions. That’s why Lee Strobel—an award-winning legal journalist with a knack for asking tough questions—decided to investigate Jesus for himself.
Live Large. Be Different. Shine Bright. By Josh Griffin and Doug Fields
In Live Large. Be Different. Shine Bright., Doug Fields and Joshua Griffin share about some important character qualities that will help teenagers live large, be different, and shine bright. A lot of what Doug and Joshua write about doesn’t seem to get much sermon time, but these topics are definitely worthy of consideration and experimentation—topics like competition, laughter, cliques, encouragement and several others will help teenagers in the process of being a more vibrant follower of Jesus.
More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell
With almost 10 million copies in print, More Than a Carpenter continues to be the most powerful evangelism tool worldwide. Josh McDowell’s timeless examination of the true nature of Christ and his impact on our lives is one of the best-selling Christian books ever. Written by a former skeptic of Christianity, it is a hard-hitting book for those who doubt Jesus’ deity and his purpose.
Your Own Jesus by Mark Hall
A true storyteller and a teacher with a heart for ministry, Mark Hall traces the downward spiral caused by spiritual compromise with the world, and then charts the upward road to wholeness and restoration that comes when we claim our very own Jesus. When that happens, believers experience authentic fellowship with the one living God. Through fascinating personal stories, scriptural insights, and discussion questions for practical interactive study, Your Own Jesus: Student Edition will set readers free to live without compromise with the Jesus they come to know intimately and love fully.
ETHIX: Being Bold in a Whatever World
High school and college students are bombarded today with mixed media messages of moral relativism. ethiX: Being Bold in a Whatever World helps young adults better understand how to make Bible-informed ethical decisions on the issues of abortion, homosexuality, marriage and divorce, the morality of war, cloning, euthanasia, capital punishment, sexuality, and more.
Middle School Survival Series by Kurt Johnston, Mark Oestreicher, and Scott Rubin
There are six books in this series: My Faith, My Family, My Friends, My School, My Changes and My Future. Each book consists of 72 easy-to-read mini chapters written specifically for young teens.
This post was written by Josh Griffin and Kurt Johnston and originally appeared as part of Simply Youth Ministry Today free newsletter. Subscribe to SYM Today right here.
Geoff StewartMore PostsFree Resource From LeaderTreksI may be Canadian, but I am no stranger to the Fourth of July and it’s less than a month away. LeaderTreks has produced a great and FREE resource themed for the 4th called “Real Freedom” which focusses on the freedom that we have in Christ and that it is a freedom we must share. The lesson is based around Galatians 5 and is a solid message that your students are going to really dig into. You can download it for free here.
-Geoff
Josh Griffin has been in youth ministry for 16+ years in a small church and a big church. He currently serves as the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. [read more]
Geoff Stewart serves the Jr / Sr High School Pastor at Peace Portal Alliance Church in Surrey B.C.
Chris Wesley serves as the Director of Student Ministry at Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland.
Colton Harker serves with Josh at Saddleback Church. He is currently in his second year in youth ministry.
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